Learning Hierarchies: a critique

Learning hierarchies have received much attention from developmental and instructional psychologists. This article notes that conceptual confusions and methodological deficiencies occur in much of the research so far published. The conceptual confusions concern the terminology used; the ‘likelihood’ or ‘causal’ relationships between elements in the hierarchy; the distinction between ‘prerequisition’ and ‘positive transfer'; the distinction between single pieces of learning and classes of learning; the inclusivity of hierarchical relationships. The methodological deficiencies arise from an inability to measure ‘causal’ relationships; the omission of measurements of ‘positive transfer'; the difficulty of measuring the range of possible relationships within a hierarchy; the need to remove instructional effects from hierarchy validation studies. It is concluded that these confusions and deficiencies preclude data from learning hierarchy studies from being used to diagnose learning failure and in test construction. Suggestions for alternatives to, and improvements on, current methods are made.